


Axiom

by Skylark



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Alliances, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/F, Series Spoilers, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 01:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1038591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skylark/pseuds/Skylark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe we could have been good for each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Axiom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vtn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vtn/gifts).



> An attempt at imitating [Kuruk](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/kuruk)'s writing style. Also my love of Kyoko got away from me, whoops. Thank you to [Blacktail](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/blacktail) and [Keltena](http://keltena.tumblr.com/) for the quick beta.
> 
> Dear vtn, I was so delighted that you requested Chihayafuru (may we please be Chihayafuru friends?), but I wanted to tell this story more. In addition, Mami and Kyoko's canonical back story is wonderful and I think you might not know about it yet. In case you don't, you can read all about it [here](http://wiki.puella-magi.net/Drama_CD_3).

Homura's world is made up of shifting rules. Allies in one timeline change to enemies in the next. Good choices become bad ones. Powerful tactics become outmoded. As a result, she learns to find certainties, anchors, things that remain static no matter how many times she resets the clock.

Kyubey is always an enemy. Sayaka always dies. Mami is always fragile. Madoka is always (too) kind.

Kyoko is wild but not senseless, blunt but not stupid, a loose cannon that has its uses. She rarely reaches for the things she wants despite her posturing, but that does not stop her from wanting them.

Kyoko's element is fire and she never stops burning.

\--

It's a few loops before she first meets Kyoko—sharp-toothed, vicious, always angling for the higher ground. Inversely, Homura is still wide-eyed and shaky, ill-footed from the shock of too many deaths. Kyoko sees the five mile stare behind her chipped red glasses, her knock-knees and hunched shoulders, and laughs.

“Dead weight,” she pronounces. “I give her a month.”

Homura's fists curl, an echo of her bowed spine. “I can fight as well as you can,” she says.

Kyoko rolls her eyes. “Go home, rookie. The adults are talking.”

“I've been a magical girl for eleven months. I'm a veteran.” Her tongue stumbles over the unfamiliar word—that's Mami's title but never hers, until now. As she says it, she realizes it's true.

“Yeah?” Kyoko says. “Then prove it.”

The spear is twice her size, and she twirls it before her like it's nothing. It's the first memory Homura keeps of her: strength used to keep the world at bay.

\--

The spear hangs inches from her face, endlessly suspended. Homura touches a gentle finger to its tip before looking up.

The blade's only one point in a flurry of halted motion. The chains create dizzying patterns and shifting traps, and the spear itself traces whirling arcs that change direction without warning. Taken together, it creates the illusion of overwhelming force. Homura slips through it, ducks under the chains and steps past the blades to find the puella magi at the heart of it all.

Kyoko has been caught mid-leap with a frozen smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. Homura stares at her small upturned nose, the tiny fang that catches at her lower lip. Despite her constant eating, her cheeks seem hollow. On impulse Homura reaches out and touches one, feeling the press of the cheekbone underneath her skin.

Something skips in her chest as time abruptly unravels and Kyoko is hurtling forwards again, slamming into her and sending them both tumbling to the ground. The spear's blade shrieks as it skids against the cobblestones, and the chains catch and pull taut.

Kyoko is breathing hard against her ear, her muscles stiff with surprise. “Time magic!” she spits, and in another moment she leaps clear, eyes darting to Sayaka and Madoka, still frozen.

Homura is still on the floor, blinking to clear her head. “I've never touched anyone while stopping time,” she murmurs. “It must undo the effects. I didn't realize—” And then Kyoko's lunging for her throat, and she has no more time for theory.

“Nice try, _rookie_ ,” Kyoko mocks, and Homura grits her teeth.

\--

She wakes again to the hospital room, the soft breeze tangling in the gauzy curtains and the wilting flower on the bedstand.

Outside of the window she can see the empty spot in Mitakihara's skyline where they're constructing a new building. She's watched it rise dozens of times, a growing pillar of steel clambering its way to the sun. The half-formed sheets of glass sparkle in the afternoon light. At this distance, the massive cranes look like child's toys.

She sits for a while—hands folded in her lap, the taste of ash and blood still on her tongue—and watches them build. She's never seen it completed. Her sense of time ticks inside of her as steadily as her heartbeat, but she uses the building's progress to double-check her place in the loop. The higher it climbs, the faster she works. She's always running out of stories.

Mitakihara is a bright and bustling town, home to the best children's hospital in the country as well as one girl who always dies, and two who only die when Homura makes mistakes, but she pays it no attention. There's nothing here for her except Madoka and the incomplete building.

Kyoko is also a stranger to Mitakihara, she thinks. She always comes after Mami dies. What is it that draws her here?

She rises, sheds her hospital gown and steps into street clothes. There is work to be done, and she is running out of time.

\--

The witch's barrier breaks into pieces, scattering the lingering scent of petrichor and leaving the dim, wary glow of pre-dawn. Homura swipes the back of her hand across her forehead, taking slow breaths. There's no blood but there's still red everywhere, the low light catching on rumpled satin, the maze-like cage of fading red chain.

Kyoko falls to her knees and clutches the body to her chest. The movement is dramatic but there's nothing that follows it, no shrieks, no sobs. The silence is heavy. The two of them are alone, and Homura twists her fingers together until her joints ache, willing herself to be calm. Sayaka has died before, she reminds herself. There is nothing new here.

“I tried to warn you,” she says. “That's why I—”

“Shut up.” Kyoko's voice is shaking, angry, barely audible.

For a moment she obeys. Then she softly repeats, “I told you.”

Kyoko gets to her feet. Her fingers are white where they're clenched around the body, which must still be warm. “Idiot,” she hisses, and her voice cracks.

Homura turns away. “I know where we can hide it,” she says. “Follow me.” She begins to walk, and after a moment she hears the syncopated echo of a second set of footsteps.

Kyoko follows her heart. Homura fights alone.

Both of them always lose.

\--

Madoka's sobbing pulls at her heart and makes it hard to think. Everything has gone wrong. There's no way she can beat Walpurgisnacht now, not with three girls dead in a single night. Mami is fragile, Kyoko's a loose cannon, Madoka is too kind; how could she have thought that telling them all the truth would ever work?

She stands over Kyoko, whose eyes are wide and blank and with a hollow where her soul gem should be, and thinks _I won't let this happen again._

\--

Homura hates the 28th. It's an exam day, and Madoka never studies for it. She won't accept the answers that Homura tries to give her on the sly, but without them Homura has to sit and watch as she becomes more and more distressed.

It doesn't matter anyway, in the end, so she takes the day off.

It's nice out. She takes a moment to stare at the cloudless sky, though her gaze eventually drops to the half-finished building in the distance. She's been so tired the past few loops. When she sleeps, she dreams of running through oceans of sand.

Kyoko is at the arcade, as Madoka told her she would be four loops ago. She's kicking a bunch of boys off of the dance machine, laughing and cracking sticks of pocky between her teeth.

“What do you want?” Kyoko asks.

Then she says, “To talk. Are you serious?”

Then, “Oh, well, if you're _paying_.”

\--

Homura tries to take them to a nice cafe, but Kyoko drags her to a tiny hole-in-the-wall at the edge of town. They're the only ones there at this time of day. The owner nods when he sees Kyoko and sets two huge bowls of ramen before them, then leaves them alone. Homura glances about, looking for exits; there aren't many but there's more than one. Kyoko follows her line of sight and nods, gulping down her soda.

“It's safe,” she confirms.

They're squashed together in the shop's shadowy back corner. Kyoko crowds into her space and shows no intention of moving, tucking into the food with obvious relish. Homura shifts, trying to make herself comfortable, and jostles her bowl.

“Don't waste food,” Kyoko snaps.

“I'm eating,” she says, and slurps up a noodle, grimacing as broth spatters across the bridge of her nose. Kyoko takes one look at her face and bursts out laughing.

“Man, I wish the others were here to see you right now!”

Homura frowns. “We're here to discuss business.”

“So go ahead. I'm all ears,” Kyoko replies, biting into the softboiled egg.

Homura lays out the plan that she's been playing with for a few loops now: the two of them together, fighting Walpurgisnacht. When she finishes, her only response is the low slurping of noodles. Kyoko's eyes are trained on her bowl, and she shows no sign that she's been paying attention.

“What do you think?” she prompts.

“Your ramen's getting cold,” Kyoko replies with her mouth full, her tone warning.

Homura sighs and takes a few bites. The broth is rich and salty, the vegetables crisp, the noodles soft. She realizes that she's hungry with a sort of detached astonishment and devotes her full attention to eating. She can't remember the last time she had a meal like this, for pleasure instead of fuel.

When both bowls are empty, Kyoko turns and claps a hand on her shoulder. Homura jumps and Kyoko's grin widens. “You're right, the rookies would just slow us down,” she says. “But the two of us together could probably beat Walpurgisnacht ourselves.”

“The rookies?” she echoes.

“You know, the other girls. The kids,” Kyoko says. “Not like us.”

“You think I'm a veteran.”

The hand on her shoulder slides down until it's resting beside hers on the wooden bench. “Well, _duh_.”

Homura looks down at their hands, pressed together in the narrow space between them. Then she looks up at Kyoko, who's watching her with a half-wary grin. Deliberately, she shifts until their fingers are linked.

No one will know, she thinks. No one will remember this, the weight and heat of Kyoko's rough palm against her own; the strength of Homura's fingers as she moors herself to this moment, as fleeting as any other; or the meeting of their lips, as inevitable as low tide.

Kyoko's eyes drift open after Homura pulls away. Her gaze is soft, terribly so, and at once Homura realizes her mistake. This is not someone she can battle beside—this is just another liability.

Homura licks her lips, tasting broth and the strawberry gloss that Kyoko has left behind. She closes her eyes, breathes out, and slides off the bench. Kyoko shouts after her, but she leaves the shop without a second glance.

For hours afterward, her hands tingle with lingering sensation. It's the only time she gives in to such selfishness.

\--

Kasamino city is smaller and poorer than Mitakihara, and its layout is a maze of alleys and narrow streets perfect for witches to hide in. Homura can see why Kyoko would choose this as her territory.

It doesn't take long for Kyoko to find her. She's in full regalia, and from the flush of exertion on her cheeks, Homura can tell she's just come from a fight. She'll be at full strength, then, with a clean soul gem and her blood still singing with adrenaline.

“This is my turf, puella magi,” Kyoko says. Her sneer is familiar. “Keep moving.”

Homura stands with her hands empty at her sides. “I have a message.”

Kyoko leaps down from the low roof and walks towards her, spear held loosely in her hands. “Well? Make it quick.”

“Tomoe Mami is dead,” she says, and Kyoko stiffens.

“ _How did you know that,”_ she snarls, her stance shifting to attack. Homura steps back, weapons flashing into her hands as Kyoko lunges forward, shouting, “How did you _know?_ ”

Neither of them are close combat fighters, but neither one gives ground to gain distance. Homura sidesteps the first thrust, ducks under the next swing, and kicks Kyoko's feet out from underneath her. As she falls, she hooks Homura with a length of chain and drags her to the ground. Homura lands hard on her back and Kyoko is upon her in a flash, the hilt of her spear cutting into her windpipe.

She could pause the timeline now, if she wished, but she wants to see where this path goes.

“Did you kill her?” Kyoko demands, breathless.

“No,” Homura replies, her voice hoarse. “But I was there when she died.”

Kyoko's expression changes in an instant. She pulls back, watching as Homura sits up and rubs her neck. She moves slowly, telegraphing her movements: Kyoko's weight still pins her legs.

She can see the muscles in Kyoko's jaw working, chewing on air as she thinks. “How did she die?” she finally asks.

“In battle. She died fighting.”

Her mouth twists. “Was it quick?”

“Yes.”

“And the witch?”

“The witch is dead.”

The gaze she casts at Homura is as sharp as the rest of her. “You?”

She nods once.

Kyoko's shoulders sag, her eyes dropping from Homura's face. Her hands clench around her weapon before she gets to her feet and gives Homura room to stand.

“Kyubey told me a few hours ago,” she says as Homura brushes at her skirt. “I don't owe you anything.”

Homura says nothing, watching as Kyoko tries to read her expression and comes up empty. The flash of irritation that crosses her face is familiar, too. “So what'd you come out here for?” she demands.

“Walpurgisnacht is coming to Mitakihara in two weeks' time. Without Tomoe Mami, the town is defenseless.”

She snorts. “That's not my problem.”

“You were her student.”

Kyoko's eyes narrow. “How do you know that?”

“That is a secret,” Homura says with a reflexive flip of her hair. “Regardless, her responsibilities now fall to you.” Kyoko says nothing, and Homura's voice grows quiet. “I know how much she meant to you.”

Kyoko cocks her head, considering her. “I hate girls like you,” she says, and Homura's eyes blink wide for a moment. She knows that Kyoko has a hard time drawing a line between love and hate; she hates Sayaka for the same things she loves her for. It's part of what makes her unpredictable.

Then Homura shakes her head. “It doesn't matter what you think of me. Think of it as a chance to expand your territory and take the most powerful grief seed in the world for yourself,” she urges. “I'll help you.”

“I don't need your help,” Kyoko says, and that, too, is reflexive.

There's a beat. Compared to Mitakihara, Kasamino is silent, almost tomb-like. It doesn't suit someone like Kyoko.

Finally, she sighs. “You avenged Mami's death. I owe you for that, so I'll let you leave without killing you. But if I see you around here again, you're dead. Got it?”

When Kyoko appears in Mitakihara Town three days later, Homura's surprised by her own sigh of relief.

\--

She can hear Madoka screaming their names in the distance. She tries to rise but her muscles won't hold her weight, and she falls with a splash back into the grimy water. Beside her, she can hear Kyoko's ragged, arrhythmic breaths.

All the buildings around them look like her own, now, ripped in half with their steel skeletons exposed. She stares at the sky and Walpurgisnacht fills her vision. The witch is listing badly to one side but still floating, still flooding the city with destruction. They're close, Homura thinks. She can taste the ash and blood in her mouth, stingingly familiar. They're so close.

Kyoko's breaths are slowing and her dress is in tatters. “Finish it,” she croaks, barely conscious. She fumbles for Homura's hand, tracing the bumps of her knuckles as if she's counting rosary beads. Her eyes fill with tears: pain, rage at her own impotence. The other girl can't help her now.

She looks up and sees a hateful pink glow in the distance as Madoka makes her wish. “I’ve failed,” she whispers, and bites her lip to stop from crying.

“Don't give up,” Kyoko begs.

Walpurgisnacht's laughter is unearthly, unceasing. Madoka leaps from a half-built skyscraper. Kyoko shudders with her last gasps, her soul gem flickering. Homura's sand timer runs dry.

This loop has brought her closer than she's ever been. If she can fight beside Kyoko again, if Mami lives—

She rolls onto her side and presses a kiss to Kyoko's temple. Rainwater fills her mouth and washes the bitter taste from her tongue.

“I'll come back,” she says—and resets.


End file.
